“You think that?” she asked. He could hear the hope in her voice.
“It’s possible.” True, it was possible. But not very probable.
“Is this going to get out?”
“We’re going to try to keep it quiet,” Cyrus said. “Until we know something, I guess.”
“He’s an adult man, and I’m gonna assume she was an adult woman if she’s handing out business cards. This shouldn’t be something for the press. This is between that man and God, and he’s in God’s hands now.”
“I wish it worked like that. Look, if you don’t want me digging, I won’t take the case. But if you think I should—”
Paulina faced him. “If he was seeing somebody like that and somebody knew and told him they knew…”
“Blackmail, you mean?” Cyrus asked.
She shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not. But if there’s any chance something else was going on, somebody making him do it, I’d hope somebody was investigating, that’s all.” Paulina checked the oven, all business. He knew the tears were coming, but not yet. She was still in shock.
“How long until breakfast is ready?” he asked.
“About ten minutes? Biscuits need to cool.”
“You mind if I go out back for a minute?”
“Gotta think your thinks?”
“Gotta think my thinks.”
She smiled sadly at him, and he kissed her forehead. She closed her eyes and leaned against him. He wrapped his arms around her and let her lean. He’d let her lean forever if she wanted to.
“Ten minutes,” she said softly. Cyrus kissed her again and started to leave. He watched from the backdoor as she packed her grief away, her sense of betrayal, saving it up for later when she could be alone to talk it out with God.
He went out into the backyard and took a seat on the wooden bench between Paulina’s bright orange zinnias and pink and yellow begonia bushes.
Cyrus always found it easier to meditate when he was outside and alone, close to trees, close to water. The morning sunlight trickled through the trees and over the grass like ripples on the surface of a living river.
He closed his eyes and went to his river.
In the beginning, when he first learned how to meditate, Cyrus would have to wait nearly an hour to get even a distant glimpse of that cosmic river in the deepest, oldest, wisest part of his mind. Now he could find it in seconds. He’d close his eyes and open his inner eyes and there was the pine forest and there was the winding dirt path, and just over the hill flowed the river.
He heard the water rising.
Cyrus focused on the coolness of the soft dirt under his feet as he walked and nothing but the cool soft dirt. The path was short and the river came into view quickly. Today it flowed slowly and the sun on it was gentle. On the opposite bank, a man stood, waiting. If they were to meet, they would meet in the river.
And if they were to meet in the river, Cyrus had to wade in first.
He reached the muddy bank and didn’t stop to roll up his pants. No need. This river was a river of truth and dreams and meaning. It ran only through his mind. Without fear—that had taken months to learn as well—Cyrus stepped into the water and found it warm and welcoming. The bottom was sandy but sturdy and shallow, though there were parts of this river that went over his head. Sometimes truth was like that.
The man on the opposite bank saw him and smiled. He, too, entered the river. And at the mid-point, halfway from bank to bank, they met.
Father Ike Murran.
He wasn’t wearing his usual clerical garb. He had on a light gray suit—a bit loose like he’d lost weight he didn’t need to lose—and a white shirt. No tie. His brown-gray hair was neatly combed. Cyrus could see the ghost of the handsome man Father Ike had been twenty years, thirty years ago. Even at sixty, he was a dignified-looking man.
Never too dignified for a smile, though.
“Cyrus Tremont,” Father Ike said with a wide grin. “You broke my heart.”
Cyrus laughed, couldn’t help it. Father Ike was the tenth man to say that to him today.
Today? What was today?
“I’m not gonna say I’m sorry,” Cyrus said.
“When’s the wedding again?” Father Ike asked.
“Not soon enough.”
“The way you keep looking at her, I’d say yesterday wouldn’t be soon enough.”
“That’s the damn truth,” Cyrus said. Father Ike held a beer bottle in his hand, a Miller Lite. They had it at the engagement party back in June. That was it…that’s where they were. The river had brought them to Cyrus and Paulina’s engagement party, held in her backyard.
The last time Cyrus had seen Father Ike alive.
“I know you heard it from everyone in this city,” Father Ike continued, “but you are one lucky man. She’s one of the great ones.”
“Truer words, man. Look, feel free to say ‘no,’” Cyrus said, “but we’re doing the full wedding Mass. Would you be willing to help out? Paulina loves you, you know.”
Nothing unusual about having more than one priest at a wedding Mass.
“It’s November seventh,” Cyrus pressed on.
Ike winced and the crow’s feet around his eyes went deep. “I don’t think I’ll be around then,” he said. “I think I’m getting transferred. New school. Not in Nola. I’d hate to say ‘yes,’ then have to back out. But if I’m around, I’ll be there as a guest.”
“It’s fine,” Cyrus said, because it was.
“But I will pray for you and Paulina. Every day.”
“I appreciate that, Father.”
“And you’ll pray for me, too?” Ike asked, smile gone.
Cyrus didn’t do much praying. That was Paulina’s thing, not his. But he was too polite to say that to a priest.
“Yeah, definitely. I better get back to my lady.”
“Give her a kiss for me. Or two.” Ike winked at him. Cyrus patted Father Ike on the shoulder and waded back to the riverbank, leaving the memory behind.
When he turned around, Father Ike was in the middle of the river. He wasn’t holding a beer in his hand anymore, but a rifle.
“Ike!”
Cyrus sat up with a start, eyes open to the real world. He drank it all in—the begonias, the neatly-mown grass, the picnic table on the patio. He texted Katherine.
Father Ike told me he was getting transferred. Ask the archbishop’s secretary what that was about, Cyrus wrote. Don’t ask Archbishop Dunn—ask the secretary. Call her at home, right now before Dunn gets to her.
Cyrus didn’t know much about Archbishop Thomas Dunn, but he knew bishops liked keeping things quiet.
Katherine wrote back almost immediately. Got it. You on the case?
I don’t know yet.
Know soon, Katherine wrote back. Cyrus rolled his eyes and stuffed his phone back into his jacket pocket. He got up and went back into the house, back into the kitchen.
Paulina smiled at him as she brought two plates over to the table. “Ready to eat?”
“Yes, ma’am.” He sat down at his plate. Today’s feast was scrambled eggs, bacon, biscuits, and yogurt with an assortment of toppings (raspberries, walnuts, chocolate chips). The woman was a health nut every day but Saturday morning, God bless her.